Bruins break from losing script

Bruins fans can forget about Game 6. They've finally got a Game 7 to remember.

MICK COLAGEO

BOSTON — Bruins fans can forget about Game 6. They've finally got a Game 7 to remember.

The feel-good sixth game of the 2008 playoff series between Boston and Montreal was the big bang of the comeback of Bruins hockey, a see-saw game the Bruins won in dramatic fashion, winning back the hearts of many dormant fans.

Despite losing Game 7 up in Montreal that year, the Bruins set a franchise record for single-day season-ticket sales the day after being eliminated.

The response signified the prodigal hockey team's return to a prominent place in the hearts of the region's sports fans and, more importantly, validated a maligned ownership, its hand-picked management and coaching staffs.

Three years later, all that goodwill built up through ongoing successes and promises for bigger and better things was on the line, and the single bounce of a puck could decide what was going to happen to advertisers, fans, coaches and perhaps even a general manager.

Claude Julien, the first Bruins coach in a quarter century to last four full seasons behind the bench, was determined not to make his players play against all that weight.

"We have a hockey game to win," he told the media on Wednesday afternoon.

It was a hockey game the Bruins had to win to perpetuate any of the good stuff that has been happening to them these past four years, and for large chunks of it and in mindboggling moments, it seemed they were determined not to.

From another blown lead to the craziest penalty of Patrice Bergeron's eight-year NHL career, all the familiar signs of impending failure were present.

But no one told Nathan Horton that he was suppose to lose, and the former Florida Panther drilled Milan Lucic's pass past Carey Price for the winning goal in a 4-3 victory that knocked the Montreal Canadiens out of the playoffs and sends the Boston Bruins back to Philadelphia for another crack at the Flyers.

After this victory, the Bruins should laugh their way to Philadelphia, where they began their downhill slide from a 3-0 series lead a year ago to lose in seven.

When the puck dropped on Wednesday's rubber match against Montreal, the TD Garden sellout crowd of 17,565 knew it had seen this act before.

Barely five minutes into Game 7 and the Bruins had come out gangbusters. Two even-strength goals and an uncaged bear was mauling the poor Montreal Canadiens, who had no idea what had hit them.

Trailing 2-0 on the scoreboard when the ice was barely scraped up, Habs coach Jacques Martin used the only timeout the NHL allows, just like Philadelphia coach Peter Laviolette did a year ago in the same spot. The Bruins were steamrolling his team in a winner-take-all game, and the Canadiens needed to stop the bleeding.

To their credit, they did. They threw the usual scare into the home crowd, capitalized on some untimely penalties and looked like the team that would still be playing hockey next week.

But unlike the Flyers did a year ago, the Canadiens didn't get the last laugh.

At the tail end of a truly horrid series, Lucic finally made a strong play, getting the puck out of the corner to Horton, who fired it like a Canadian kid who had never been in the Stanley Cup playoffs before.

Coming into Wednesday, the cumulative Game 7 career records of the players on each team added up to a 39-13 record for the Canadiens and a 12-38 mark for the Bruins.

History wasn't on Boston's side, but the Bruins had hockey reasons for thinking this would be their night.

Having won the Northeast Division, the Bruins earned home ice advantage and with it, the last line change. So their top line of David Krejci, Horton and Lucic didn't have to skate opposite Hal Gill and P.K. Subban, who owned them the six prior games.

Once again, the Bruins were in a good place, and after taking a 2-0 lead, they let the pedal off the floor and Montreal came back to tie 2-2.

When Chris Kelly put Boston back on top in the third period, the Bruins only needed to play smart. Then their smartest player took the penalty that cost them their lead and sent the game to overtime.

Bergeron, who high-sticked James Wisniewski, had to watch from the penalty box as Subban ripped off a rocket that tied the score with under two minutes remaining in regulation time.

Several times in the overtime, the Habs spun pucks at Tim Thomas, hoping the goalie would cough up a rebound like the one that Scott Walker capitalized on in 2009 when Boston lost to Carolina in its last Game 7 overtime.

Gill had a chance to win it for Montreal, and a goal would have been a bitter pill for a Boston crowd that booed him out of his own town.

Then one goal by Horton saved the day, saved jobs and saved a franchise's goodwill for at least another two weeks.

"Nice to reward our fans, because they've been punished enough," said Julien.

Mick Colageo covers hockey for The Standard-Times. Contact him at mcolageo@s-t.com and visit www.southcoasttoday.com/rinkrap

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